The title means, “It’s the end!” in Japanese. Sometimes I still find myself thinking in Japanese and have to translate in my head, even though it’s been a month shy of two decades since I’ve seen the Land of the Rising Sun. Weird. I wonder if that will happen for the rest of my life????
So, I finished it. My WIP. Er, my new WIP, that is. Which is why I’ve been AWOL from this blog for most of the month.
For the past 2 1/2 years I had been mainly working on one novel (with a few other projects interspersed.) It is the coolest concept. And I love the characters. And the plot is killer. And the scenes are great. But the theme is bankrupt. It just simply won’t resonate with humankind. It won’t work for any reader, and it barely works for me.
So I put it on the shelf.
And at the end of April I dug around on the shelf (okay, in the old computer files from back when I had the glitchy laptop of my nightmares). Voila! I came across an old novel I’d done 84 pages on, and then stopped right when the plot got good. To my utter surprise (because all I remembered from it was the theme and the concept, not the characters or the plot), the thing was pretty funny. It was a kind of a mystery novel, mixed in with a romantic comedy.
And I had NO IDEA how it was supposed to end. Not who stole the art, not who the girl was supposed to end up with, not how the crime was going to be solved.
Nothing.
But I got a seed of an idea, started typing, and found out how it ended as I went along. Well, I did a rudimentary outline, which I systematically scrapped as I went.
And by last Wednesday I was done. Owari da. My husband read the draft, pronounced it “on the right track,” gave me some really good editing suggestions, and I think I know how to put them into the text. It’s incredible how fast it all came together.
Mainly, the thing I learned from this is a change was as good as a rest. My other WIP needed a rest. And maybe I can go back to it with fresh vision and A NEW THEME THAT WORKS–later, after I finish whipping this one into publication shape.
As it is, I’m working up cover art, mulling over the title, thinking about how to rework the end so it’s less…corny. And I might have a lot of these done before my kids get done with school on Thursday afternoon.
Yay!
Meanwhile, I have a different announcement on Monday. IMMERSED officially launches. Even though it leaked out early. But this is the “real” launch date. I’ll be tweeting and Facebooking the blog posts. If you’re on my Twitter feed or my Facebook feed, I beg your patience and generosity.
Happy reading. And if you don’t hear from me much, it’s because I’m immersed in this next WIP. A good place to be as a writer.
